Cougar Town Sedan

Claim: Photographs show a Mazda automobile that was attacked by a mountain lion.

REAL PHOTOGRAPHS; INACCURATE DESCRIPTION

Example:[Collected via e-mail, November 2010]

This happened Monday night in Eureka Montana.The car was attacked by a mountain lion during the night. They think their cat was hiding underneath the car or in the motor. Some incredible pictures.

Origins: The photographs displayed above do depict a Mazda automobile that suffered a mauling at the hands (or paws) of some type of animal in the Eureka, Montana, area. However, although a mountain lion was initially assumed to be the responsible party, Great Falls television station KRTV noted that a reporter from the local Eureka newspaper found that the damage was actually wrought by critters of the canine, not feline, variety, and that the culprits were likely domesticated rather than wild:

Krista Tincher, a reporter for the Tobacco Valley News, contacted us and reports that a game warden has verified that the tracks on the car are "clearly those of a dog, though the car owners suspected a mountain lion at first."

Tincher reports that the people involved in the incident speculated that one or two neighbor dogs — possibly Rottweilers — were trying to get at the car owner's cat that apparently was hiding inside the engine compartment of the car.